breathe

Listen, are you breathing just a little

and calling it a life?  

~Mary Oliver 

So many parents come into my office stretched beyond their capacity and can hardly cope.  Yet when I suggest they set some boundaries, get some rest and take a breather, they often fiercely protest: “I can’t.  I feel too guilty!” 

We think that being a good parent means constantly sacrificing our interests to our child’s.  One father I know cannot touch a meal before all of his children have eaten.  He’s only too happy to walk away from the table hungry, provided all of his children are full.  

Self-sacrifice is not always what our children require.  Our actions should be love-driven not guilt-driven.  Granted, a good parent puts a child’s needs above their own whenever necessary.  But it is not always necessary.  In fact it is sometimes contra-indicated.  You cannot be a good parent if you are over-tired, cranky and listless.

Love means being there for your child when you’re needed.  You have to look after yourself so you can do that.  Like the flight attendant reminds us every time we fly: put the oxygen mask on yourself first, and then on your child.

worry wolves

An old Cherokee chief was teaching his grandson about life.
"A fight is going on inside me," he said to the boy.
"It is a terrible fight between two wolves.  One is evil - he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, self-doubt, and ego.
The other is good - he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith.  This same fight is going on inside you - and inside every other person, too."
The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, "Which wolf will win?"
The old chief simply replied, "The one you feed."

Many people suffer from being torn between opposing forces inside of them.  Some of them experience these forces as good versus evil.  Others experience them as rational versus emotional.  Still others experience them as impulse versus self-control.  It is not always a moral fight, but in all cases there is suffering because of an inner struggle.

I see this most frequently in people who worry too much.  Worry tends to manifest as regret or indignation, guilt or apprehension, feeding thoughts that make you feel worse and worse: “I did not do right by my daughter today”, “How dare he say that to me!” or the perennial, “What if… ”.  These kinds of thoughts do not make you any wiser.  They won’t buy you more peace of mind.  They can’t undo what has been done.  They just fatten the worry wolf.

To have peace of mind, to act wisely and do the right thing, you have to feed peace, wisdom and righteousness. Not worry.  So don’t worry.

how could you?

The struggle we undergo to remain faithful to someone we love is little better than infidelity.

~ La Rochefoucauld

An affair is a symptom of a marriage that is not working. There may not be enough intimacy, affection or sex, communication may have broken down or a baby or child may be taking up a lot of time and attention. In all cases, at least one of the partners is not satisfied. Usually it is the person who has the most trouble asserting themselves in the marriage.

The guilt around having an affair, even just the thought of having an affair, often eclipses this reality. Guilt is in fact why needs may have gone unmet in the first place: you feel badly about having them and don't assert yourself until it is too late. That is why your partner is shocked to learn of your infidelity. “I had no idea you weren't happy”, he tells you, “why didn't you say something?”

Infidelity is often attributed to moral depravity in the face of temptation and its antidote to the exercise of self-restraint. But is that what holds a marriage together? Is that love? I like to quote Spinoza on the subject. He defines love first and foremost as joy but “with the accompanying idea of an external cause”.

Fidelity is really all about mutual satisfaction.

mental anorexia

Parental over-protectiveness can become overbearing.  It can quash the process of separation and differentiation which, like birth, are necessary for a child to come into her own.    

If a child cannot successfully individuate, the child’s will goes underground and may seek expression in deviant or self-destructive ways.

Anorexia is an example of this.  

The refusal to eat harks back to the rejection of the breast and the impulse to self-wean.   When a parent’s need to nurture trumps a child’s need for independence, the child has no recourse but to reject the food of love.  This can be transposed to social expectations and can manifest, for example, as the refusal to swallow Mom and Dad’s rules.

This kind of refusal is more common than anorexia in boys, possibly because boys differentiate from their mothers earlier at the level of their bodies.  Just like anorexia, however, the more a parent tries to cajole a child with preaching and sermonizing and speeching and yelling, the more the child resists being nurtured and controlled.  

Success usually only comes after failure.  That is why an anorexic girl is often cured by hospitalization, and a delinquent boy by school failure.  Unprotected by his parents from the consequences of his actions, a child is finally free to find the motivation from within.

a note on EMDR

ripeness is all
~ King Lear; Shakespeare

EMDR is a powerful adjunct to therapy. When used at the right time it can be just the thing that will move someone out of stagnation and into complete recovery. In terms of inducing an immediate and thorough turnabout in a person's frame of mind it is really unparalleled compared to any other therapy I know.

Sometimes, having heard of the powerful transformations facilitated by EMDR, people come to therapy requesting it like a drug. “I need EMDR to make this bad memory go away,” they might say, thinking that EMDR is going to remove it like a surgical intervention. Or they might think that it can be used like a magic wand to bring repressed pain to the surface to be expunged without having to feel a thing. That is sadly not the case.

EMDR is not a cure. It is a way to help process painful memories so that they become less intrusive in our everyday lives. Although it provides a rapid way to gain insight and resolution over nagging problems that may have had their hooks in us for years, it does not undo the past or change who you are. It merely enables your natural ability to grow so you can adapt to the challenges in your life at your optimal capacity. The growth still depends very much on how ready you are to move on.

Just as a seed opens and blossoms in its own time, so too the human spirit. EMDR is a kind of ripening agent, like Miracle-Gro. No more nor less.

cerveau figé?

Question de JD:
Je suis une agnostique sans trop de convictions mais agnostique quand-même. L'instinct de survie et/ou de reproduction est à la base de tous vivants. Les sentiments, les concepts de deuil, souffrance, sagesse, abdication ne sont qu'invention de l'homme pour arriver à comprendre et accepter ce qu'il est et ce qui l'entoure. Embrasser la vie, ne pas la subir, gagnant ou victime, je veux bien croire que notre attitude devant tout cela fera une différence entre être actif ou passif, positif ou négatif, mais qu'en est-il si notre cerveau est figé dans un modèle de marbre?

J'ai toujours tenté de sortir de mon milieu, mais nous sommes le produit d'une éducation, d'une société, d'un genre féminin ou masculin et d'un cerveau composé de neurotransmetteurs qui fonctionnent selon une chimie bien précise qui modèle notre esprit, nos idées et je ne parle même pas des connaissances acquises, de l'intelligence. Ainsi, pour moi, le désir de vivre, n'est que la résultante de notre cerveau reptilien, l'instinct de survie.

Réponse de P.I.:
Attention! Le cerveau n'est pas "figé dans un modèle de marbre". Le nouveau modèle neuroscientifique, basé sur des données stupéfiantes, parle au contraire de la neuroplasticité du cerveau, c'est-à-dire de sa malléabilité. Nous pouvons changer notre cerveau avec nos pensées. Des résonances magnétiques le constatent bien. Grâce aux IRMs, nous savons, par exemple, que la méditation et la psychothérapie transforment le cerveau de la même manière que des anti-dépresseurs.

Le cerveau reptilien est étroitement lié aux émotions. Il consiste d'un réseau d'associations émotives. C'est la fondation dans laquelle est imprimée nos toutes premières expériences de la vie. Oui, il peut avoir l'air d'être devenu comme du béton mais il n'en est rien.

Un vidéo que tu trouveras peut-être intéressant sur le livre de Norman Doidge:
The Brain That Changes Itself

Cela dit, si on persiste à croire que le cerveau ne change pas, il ne changera pas. Un peu comme un placebo à l'inverse!

splitting

I don't even know what I was running for - I guess I just felt like it.
~ J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

She went from cool to hot in about 15 minutes because nobody leaped into action.

The dynamic had always been to make Dad "the bad guy" for resisting her whims and desires and Mom "the good guy" who was willing to rescue her from frustration and distress. (This is called splitting. Teenagers are pros at it. When their efforts are frustrated they’ll pull a tantrum worthy of a two-year old.) But since Mom had learned to deflect her daughter’s pressure tactics, the girl was at loose ends. Nobody was willing to jump in and be the hero.

The girl had a meltdown in my office. Because her parents knew that the problem their daughter faced was manageable and that she was well-equipped to handle it, their hearts broke for her but they did not cave. Instead they just gave their sobbing child lots of empathy, encouragement and support.

In our next family meeting, the girl described how she had handled the situation, by herself. She got through it alone and was glowing, proud and confident.

By forming a united front, by refusing to split into good cop/bad cop, the parents in this story enabled their daughter, not only to find the resources she needed within herself, but also helped her to see her own parents more realistically. Mom and Dad taught her that there are no good guys and bad guys out there. That nobody’s a monster and nobody’s perfect and that there are no magic solutions to life’s problems. We all just do the best that we can.